Smoldering Iran Nuclear Crisis Risks Catching Fire
Even as the US and its European allies grapple with Russia's invasion of Ukraine and rising tensions with China, the smoldering crisis over Iran's nuclear program threatens to reignite.
Even as the US and its European allies grapple with Russia's invasion of Ukraine and rising tensions with China, the smoldering crisis over Iran's nuclear program threatens to reignite.
In a sign of European concern, Britain, France and Germany have warned Iran they would trigger a return of UN sanctions against Tehran if it enriched uranium to the optimal level for a nuclear weapon, three European officials said.
The threat, made last year in a previously unreported letter sent by the countries' foreign ministers, underscores Western fears that Iran could produce bomb-grade uranium of 90% purity.
Those concerns intensified in February after UN inspectors revealed their discovery of uranium particles of 83.7% purity at an Iran nuclear facility built deep underground to protect it from air strikes.
A renewed crisis over Iran would come at a bad time for U.S. President Joe Biden who is focused on maintaining allies' support for the war in Ukraine and on rallying Western countries to push back on China's military and diplomatic ambitions.
But while some White House aides may prefer to keep Iran off the president's desk, officials and analysts suggested they may not have that luxury.
"They are busy with Ukraine, Russia and they don't want, for the time being, to open another front," said a Western diplomat on condition of anonymity. "Therefore, they want to do everything in their power to prevent this (90%) from happening."
'Snapback' Of UN Sanctions?
Western officials fear a nuclear-armed Iran could threaten Israel, Gulf Arab oil producers, and spark a regional arms race.
Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons.
US and European officials have been searching for ways to curb Tehran's program since the breakdown of indirect US-Iranian talks on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran, Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States.
The accord, aimed at keeping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, required Tehran to accept restrictions on its nuclear program and more extensive UN inspections, in exchange for an end to UN, US, and EU sanctions.
The deal, which had capped Iran's uranium enrichment at 3.67%, was abandoned in 2018 by then-US President Donald Trump, who argued it was too generous to Tehran.
Trump reimposed broad US sanctions, many of which have the secondary effect of forcing non-US firms stop dealing with Iran or risk losing access to the US market, but UN sanctions were not reactivated.
The deal had set out a procedure for the veto-proof "snapback" of the UN sanctions on Iran – including an oil embargo and banking restrictions – in response to Iranian violations. Any of the states who signed onto the original deal can trigger the snapback.
US sanctions - even with their secondary effects - have failed to keep Iran from producing ever-purer levels of uranium and China has flouted them by buying Iranian oil, making it unclear if the UN measures would be any more effective.
But Iran might refrain from enriching to 90% to avoid the public rebuke implicit in the return of UN sanctions.
A senior Iranian nuclear official said Tehran would not take the revival of UN sanctions lying down.
"If the other parties under any pretext trigger it, they will be responsible for all the consequences," he told Reuters. "Iran's reaction could range from leaving the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) to accelerating our nuclear work."
Leaving the NPT would free Iran to develop nuclear arms.
The Iranian official's threat was more explicit than comments by an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, who on Monday said only that Iran had told Western powers how it would react.
It remains unclear if the 83.7% particles were created deliberately. But Western officials and analysts say that Iran's production of 90% uranium would demand a significant response.
A US State Department spokesman said Biden "is absolutely committed" to making sure Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon.
"We believe diplomacy is the best way to achieve that goal, but President Biden has also been clear that we have not removed any option from the table," the spokesperson added, hinting at the possibility of military action.
'Face A Crisis At Some Point'
While Western officials want to leave the door open for diplomacy, tensions with Russia and China make that harder.
Divisions over the Ukraine war, which has seen Iran provide military aid to Russia, and rising Sino-US tensions further reduce the odds of resurrecting the deal because it is unclear how hard Moscow or Beijing might push for its revival.
If the deal is dead, the West has three broad options: deterrence, military action, or a new negotiated arrangement.
Deterrence has a downside: it could give Tehran time to creep toward a nuclear weapons capability.
Dennis Ross, a veteran US diplomat now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank, suggested Biden may have to do more to make Iran fear the consequences of enriching to higher levels.
"If you don't do enough to persuade the Iranians of the risks they are running, you will face a crisis at some point because they will go to 90%" or move toward weaponization, he said. "What you are seeing is an effort to walk that tightrope."
Analysis by Reuters
According to the secret documents received by Iran International, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) had asked the government to let the agency import 800,000 tons of phosphate from the mines under the Islamic Republic’s control in Syria without paying the share of the administration.
One of the documents is a letter issued in January by Mojtaba Hosseinipour, a deputy at the president’s office, addressing Minister of Economic and Financial Affairs Ehsan Khandozi and Reza Fatemi Amin, the former Minister of Industry, Mines and Business who was sacked this week, as well as former head of Iran's Planning and Budget Organization Masoud Mirkazemi and Mohammad Dehghan, Raisi’s deputy in legal matters.
In the letter, the office of the president has asked the officials to decide whether or not they can give the green light to the nuclear agency for “the annual purchase of phosphates from Syria without paying the government’s share.”
In 2017, Tehran and Damascus signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in a phosphate mine in Syria’s Al-Sharqiya. Syria is among the world’s largest exporters of the rock phosphate, a raw material used in the production of phosphatic fertilizers. The main use of phosphate is production of fertilizers, but the rock is also an unconventional source to extract uranium, explained in another document attached to the letter.
While EU sanctions on Syria do not explicitly prohibit phosphate imports, they do ban deals with the Syrian minister of oil and mineral resources, who is in charge of phosphates. Cheap Syrian phosphate exports to Europe have boomed in recent years, The Guardian reported in January 2022, noting that European farmers are dependent on phosphate fertilizers. Anyhow, it seems that the Islamic Republic has found another way around sanctions to advance its nuclear program.
Another letter included in the bundle of documents is by the head of Iran’s atomic agency, Mohammad Eslami, who asked Raisi’s first deputy Mohammad Mokhber to allow the purchase of the product from Syria.
“In order to supply part of the uranium needed for the country's nuclear industry, this organization (AEOI) is mulling a project to extract uranium from Syria’s phosphate mines, the exploitation of which is at the disposal of the Islamic Republic,” Eslami wrote.
“Due to the high grade of uranium in the phosphate soil of these mines, the extraction of the element and the preparation of yellowcake from it is technically more feasible than the extraction of uranium from low-grade radioactive mines of Iran,” he added, requesting the cabinet to give the go-ahead for the project without paying the government.
Yellowcake is used in the preparation of uranium fuel for nuclear reactors, for which it is smelted into purified uranium dioxide for use in fuel rods for pressurized heavy-water reactors and other systems that use natural unenriched uranium. It has both civilian use as well as application for weapons but it should be processed further. Highly enriched uranium can be blended down with uranium containing low levels of U-235 to produce low-enriched uranium -- less than 5% U-235 -- fuel for power reactors. Further processing can yield weapons-grade uranium with U-235 levels usually above 90%, suitable for nuclear weapons.
In an appendix attached to the letter, the nuclear agency said that there are two main sources for extracting uranium, but the Islamic Republic is barred from using the conventional sources under international sanctions.
It has been forced to resort to unconventional sources in which uranium is extracted as a byproduct, such as is the case for phosphate soil.Khunayfis mine in Homs Governorate with 300 million tons of phosphates is the better choice among the mines under contract with Iran because it has a higher amount of uranium, according to the document.
The presidents of Iran and Syria on Wednesday signed a long-term strategic cooperation agreement, including a memorandum of understanding on oil industry cooperation.
The signing came during a visit by Raisi to Damascus for talks with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad, in the first such visit by an Iranian head of state since war broke out in Syria in 2011. Tehran is helping Syria rebuild its roads, airports, power stations and ports — potentially benefiting the Revolutionary Guards, which own the biggest construction firms in Iran.
In March, the E3, made up of France, Germany and the UK, issued a tough statement addressing IAEA Board of Governors, demanding immediate response to Iran’s 84-percent uranium enrichment.
While the US responded to the IAEA chief’s visit to Tehran with a cautious approach, waiting to see what the outcomes would be, the E3 said the enrichment at up to 83.7% U-235 is an “extremely grave escalation” which comes against the highly concerning backdrop of continued accumulation of high enriched uranium up to 60% and Iran continuing to expand its enrichment capabilities.